Wednesday, November 19, 2008

This blog actually started with my wanting to expand arguments I had made several places - most notably at EJ. Seems appropriate that a post I make there spawns my first post on DK tanking here.

Caveat: I don't know anything about DKs, really, other than they're the tank that looks like they belong in a rave when using their abilities. However, one thing I do know a lot about is parry mechanics. Here's the post I made over at EJ:

How we figure out whether a DK is better off using a 2h or 2 1-h comes down to a few things. These would be nice to have, data wise, but don't end up mattering hugely.

What is the typical expertise value of a DK?What is their typical avoidance %?What is their typical HP?

They don't matter because either the DK is dealing with content that is trivial (in which case min-maxxing tanking weapons is not important) or the DK is dealing with content that is not (in which case their avoidance, expertise and HP are on the cusp of what is needed to deal with a boss).

After that, we need to take typical tanking weapons into consideration. I would say that a 1.6 speed 1h would be typical (I realize there is a great, slow 1h in naxx, but that is not the standard), and a 3.0 speed 2h weapon would be typical.

The special hit rate between 2h and 1h will remain unmodified. That leaves only white attacks and weapon speed to consider.

With 2 1.6 weapons attacking, you will have 3.75 as many attacks in 3.0 seconds as you would a 2h weapon. This means you have 3.75 times as likely a chance of being parried. Clearly, as you get slower tanking weapons this value goes down. The question is whether the value of using two tanking weapons is worth getting parried almost 4 times as often.

The gain of 76 defense rating (15.4 defense, or 1.83% total avoidance) is great, but the loss of 74 strength is pretty poor. Still, that's only 18.5 parry rating, or a bit less than .4% parry. So the total avoidance gain is around 1.5%. So to deal with being parried 3.75 times more often in terms of white attacks, you are gaining 1.5% avoidance and about 12 stamina.

To me, this doesn't sound remotely good enough. And note that using the comparison above, it's actually worse; you get parried 4.25 times more often from white attacks.

Finally, note that the overall parries is not 3.75 times as many times due to the special attacks also having parry chances. In a 200 second fight, you would have 133 special attacks (assuming one every gcd, which I admit is fudging things), 67 attacks with a 2h, and 250 attacks with 2 1h. Or 183 more attacks total. That is 1.9 times more than with a 2h alone. So basically you're trading at best 2% avoidance for a doubling of the chance to be parried.

When a parry occurs, the target that parried the attack has a chance of having the current swing hasted, as follows: * If the next attack would normally occur within 20% of your weapon speed after the parry, there is no effect.* If the next attack would normally occur between 20% and 60% of your weapon speed later, it happens 20% of your weapon speed later instead.* If the next attack would normally occur more than 60% of your weapon speed later, the time until your next attack is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed.

The overall effect of a parried attack is to speed up a boss's swing timer by roughly 30%. In the worst case it is 40%, but that doesn't happen all the time. ) This means that for using 2 1-handed weapons, you are giving the boss 30% more haste. You have effectively bloodlusted the boss after each parry. 30% more normal swings may not be a lot for someone like Rage Winterchill, but for Patchwerk? And remember, this is not 30% more swings over a nice, long extended time; this is 30% overall more damage that comes in tasty, bursty chunks of death that tends to take your healers off-guard.

Note that I'm not saying doubling the parries makes the boss have bloodlust the entire fight; it depends a lot on how much expertise you have, and I've written about this and parry-gibbing prior to this.

Now, if you're expertise-capped for parry that's something else entirely. Then you'll be trading basically some damage for some avoidance, and that's a great thing to trade. But getting to that 64 expertise value (or 500 expertise rating) is going to be pretty tough, and I bet that you could have just gemmed/enchanted for avoidance and skipped the expertise part anyway.

ETA: one thing I did not factor into consideration is the ability to use two enchants. Having dual goose would help somewhat with the mitigation factor, but even then we're talking about at best 3% total avoidance vs. 30% boss haste. That still doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

32 comments:

I've noticed that players tend to draw battle lines when it comes to Death Knight(DK) Dual Wielding(DW) for tanking and would like to address your analysis and concerns.

The main point of your argument seems to be that DW basically amounts to a 30% haste buff given to a boss that could logically overwhelm a healer in a raid setting. This 30% haste buff vs the 2% avoidance gained from DW is simply not worth it, in your opinion.

I will confess that I am on the fence about DK and DW since I see both sides of the argument. On the pro DW side, one argues that the lack of DW seriously decreases our avoidance capability. To see what I mean, if you do a quick search for 2-handed weapons that have defense on them, there is a grand total of 1, an uncommon item.

Moreover, there are 11 1-handers with defense on them, which would logically add up to the avoidance cap. The argument for DK/DW is that Defense rating is really hard to get nowadays. The current cap in this build for a level 80 to be uncrittable is 689. Granted that using only epics, one can get to that level, but if you're a new tank getting into an instance with just blues, it can be very daunting.

On the other hand, introducing DW into the picture creates a whole host of problems, that you mentioned in your earlier post. Getting up to the Expertise cap requires 492 rating given that combat parses show an average of 12-15% parry chance for a raid Boss.

Not only that, if one starts going for Expertise and trying to master that, it becomes harder since one will be disregarding the already difficult Defense cap.

When it comes down to the gut feeling, I would argue that Blizzard would like to see DK/DW become a viable reality. There is a talent deep within all 3 DK talent trees which increase Expertise skill by 5. Now that since developers have stated that they think all trees can be used for tanking, those talent points suggest a trend towards building a DW tanking spec.

Doing searches for gear with both good defense show that it is possible to attain both the crit immunity as well as fully negating a boss' chance to parry with current WoTLK gear. I feel that at first, DW tanking is not likely a very good idea as preference should be given towards reaching the Defense cap, but with time, gearing towards making Bosses unparryable seems to be both a realistic and logical goal that will necessitate DW.

Sephardic - thanks for coming by. Really nice post. And I think you're right - I think that they'd like to give DKs the ability to DW tank down the road, or at least allow for the possibility. They've stated that that wasn't their intent, but they've certainly left the door open to allow it.

But for right now? I think that it's just too hard. DKs are already the most fragile tank in terms of dealing with unlucky burst damage. Adding to that to get a bit more avoidance or get uncrittable seems like a poor choice, at least for now.

I think with better tier gear and better enchants/gems down the way, you'll start seeing more people do this. Not because it's easier to get uncrittable, but because when you dual wield you'll be getting a lot more avoidance. And similar to what tanks were like towards the end of BT, the avoidance will get so good that stacking more of it will be worth losing some parries. Between that and more expertise, it'll probably be a non-issue then. But now? No way.

I was aware that the Red Sword of Courage was unique; the point of the comparison wasn't to get actual values, but to demonstrate what is lost when comparing two equal ilvl sets. And really, there's nothing like the Red Sword, so if anything you're likely to see worse stats, not better.

It's a good point to make though - this was entirely a theoretical post. :)

NM reading comprehension ftl. Did not realize these were 1h/2h specific enchants (swordbreaker vs swordshatter) so it comes down to a simply question of increased incoming damage vs slight increase in mitigation.

For trivial content dual wield would be viable imo, but for challenging/learning content id rather give my healers a bit more lee-way and tank 2h

One thing you haven't taken into consideration is that DK as a raid tank is usually handling OT/Soak/Caster/Multi-Mob tanking situations, for which the case can be made that the benefit of additional avoidance available when DW'ing is greatly enhanced, and the potential additional damage from parry-haste is greatly reduced or eliminated.

I'm a tanking Frost DK and I've meddled with both situations and this is what I've gotten.

I'm using the Red Sword of Courage and Eternally Folded Blade for DW and Sword of Justice with a +12 Parry gem socketed.

With DW I deal 229-231 dps just auto attacks vs. a lvl 80 mob dummy, while I get 192 on avg with my 2 hander.

Along with that, I gain more hit, dodge and roughly 1% more to my parry with the DW. My health difference is off my 30 points.

Now I think that the expertise parry cap is at 390, which isn't too hard (if you have the gold) to get nowadays along with all the new enchantments and gems they've brought out, so how viable of a spec are we looking at here overall I think is what people are wondering.

Scratch what I said up there, with the expertise being so high then yeah, you'll be giving up too much imo to get it. And from respeccing to test everything out and what not I have successfully increased my threat output almost by 2-3k.

Everyone is also listing that you're DW 2x 1.6 speed weapons. This is probably not the case as 2x 2.5 speed swords (or better 2.6) or at least 1 is best. Yes 2 weapons give you defensive stats but you'll want a hard hitting 1h for Rune Strike, (which cannot be blocked, dodged or parried) and even instants. Also to take into account that as frost you use 2 non parriable (is that a word :P ) attacks to generate threat, being Icy Touch and Howling Blast. Both are spells and are not subject to parry. Tack on DnD, Pestilence, Blood Boil, all spells that can not be parried.

I'm at work so finding the link to the Gestalt thread on DW DK tanks is impossible, but it shows a perfect DK tank world. Check it out the TLDR is that Warriors have just as high a chance to get parried and a shield provides nothing special to avoid said parrygib as the avoidance numbers of DKs with Dodge/Parry are similar to that of a Warrior.

To sum up DK DW tanks are viable. The problem is in perfect weapons for them, but that's the case for 2h tanks too. I forsee the DK DW accomplishment to be something to be proud of. I see this as the druid/pally tanking battles of old. GL out there!

Sure, your 2hd weapons is 3.0, but what if you're DK has Icy Talons? Or a Shaman Haste?

2hd weapons take a bigger benefit from haste than 1hd weapons (the get a bigger reduction due to their slower swing speeds).

So, in actuality, the speed gap between 1hd and 2hd weapons is closer. However, 2x1hd weapons are still going to be faster and definitely be swinging twice as often (since you're swinging two weapons).

Except... what the defensive chain? Doe parry come before miss? Before Dodge? Before block?

If you're off hand has a built in miss rating, how often can we factor out that it's just going to miss, and not even have a chance for parry?

Calculate that in with Expertise.

It seems a lot more complicated and potentially balanced.

What if you dual wield but without icy talons but often use Icy Talons with 2hd weapons?

And on a side thought, Mark of Blood would make a great save your button skill should a boss get haste of parry, given it heals the target (assuming it's the DK) 4% every hit. As long as the boss does closer to 4% damage per hit which I doubt they're damage is that low.

But it would really slow down the total damage taken... for 20seconds at least. hehe

Dwing and attacking faster does not increase your chance to be parried. The only thing attacking faster does is increase the opportunity to be parried. If the chance to be parried by a boss is 5% then dw or not the % stays the same. Now you do have a greater opportunity to be parried because of more attacks. Think of it as a 2h tank fighting a mob for 3min and a dw for 1. I think all of you are over estimating this whole parry flurry when in reality it is a non issue.

Dwing and attacking faster does not increase your chance to be parried. The only thing attacking faster does is increase the opportunity to be parried.

Sorry, I had to comment on this. Increasing your opportunity to be parried increases the chance that you'll be parried. More accurately, all other things being equal if person 1 attacks 100 times in a given time and person 2 attacks 200 times in a given time person 2 will be parried twice as often as person one in that time.

No, the chance of parries is the same in both cases, but the actual AMOUNT of parries is significantly different. And that is the issue, especially when the result of a parry is exactly the same regardless of what your weapon speed is.

If we take your calculation and modify it for my ideal Frost DK tank and compare this to a warrior as best I know how to, while assuming a Frost DW-ing tank would use a 2.6s MH to maximize Rune/Frost Strike and Blood-Caked Blade (from what I've read, off-hand BCB procs use the MH's damage) and a 1.6s OH to maximize any procs, and also assuming the next patch does in fact remove the cooldown from Howling Blast...

As for my rationale on the specials, only 3 specials every other (roughly) 10 second rotation could be parried, being Blood Strike for death runes and Plague Strike for initial disease application. After the first rotation those death runes would be used for another Howling Blast, as would the extra unholy since the frost it was paired with in disease application is ready for another Howling Blast. All other specials used would be Rune/Frost Strike (parry immune), Icy Touch and Howling blast (spells),Death and Decay, Pestilence and Blood Boil (all spells), and maybe Death Coil for something at range(also a spell). Obliterate is all but obsolete in scenario, being completely replaced by Howling Blast.

As for the comparison, I hope someone else takes this up after I attempt it and fail miserably, because I know very little about warriors. Assuming they're using a 1.6s weapon for a quick rage dump..

200s at 1.6s = 125 attacks200s = 133 possible GCDs, 90 of which can be parried.

Grand Total of 223 possible parries in 200 seconds.

I came up with the 90 parry-able specials out of 133 GCDs very simply (and possibly naively)... maxDPS shows an ideal warrior threat rotation as consisting of Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate and Shockwave. Assuming an infinite rage scenario allowing all abilities to be used on demand, 33 of those GCDs would be used for Shield Slam with its 6s CD and 10 of them for Shockwave with its 20s CD.

If I'm even close to right about any of this, the parry haste issue is largely irrelevant to the build I'm working on. Needless to say I hope I am close, but I'll leave that for others to decide.

Side note: Post-Patch, this is the tanking spec I'm working on that the above argument applies to.

I use mainly spells (IT, HB, DC, BB, PEST) and i stack hit for spell cap. as spell cap is greater than the 2hand cap using DW makes more use of the +hit, and it provides better stats. (actually makes 2hand better for heroics cos roughly same cap and DW better for raids to take advantage of extra hit i have on then)

The only parryable attack i land is my auto attacks of which normally 10-15% will be misses, and the odd plague strike.

In a recent Naxx run the warrior tank i ran with put out a ton more parryable attacks than me. (it wouldn't be accurate to compare amount of parrys as only one can tank a boss)

I may not be a great tank or going about this the right way, but it works for now, and it seems to me this parry haste thing is blown well out of proportion.

Eric, thanks for coming by. Your math is fine. And yes, a dual-wielding DK will be parried on average as much as a warrior will. That's the baseline.

The issue comes up when you think about how warriors deal with things vs. how DKs do. Warriors have more HP and block, and tend to have more expertise in general. As a result, they'll be able to soak the damage from those swings better. A DK tends to deal with incoming damage via cooldowns and avoidance. This is a (bad pun intended) hit or miss proposition. They could be completely unaffected by the extra attack - or they could get unlucky and be hit three times in a row. Therein lies the problem.

I do agree that as you get up in gear this ceases being a practical issue. There are other reasons that dual wielding isn't as good (a lot of the attacks scale off of weapon damage, for instance, and the 2h runeforgings are really good) but the parry issue isn't as big a deal as it was before. Still, doubling the amount of parries that you can do is not a trivial issue, and it will increase your overall damage.

Anon - see Eric's math. I agree, a warrior has a lot more parryable attacks in general than a death knight does. However, dual wielding brings you on par with warriors - and warriors have had, traditionally, issues with parrygib.

The sad thing is that right now, this really isn't an issue. I can't think of a single boss that could potentially parrygib anyone. The incoming damage is simply too low for physical base attacks. There are no fights like Prince, and any fights that could be remotely considered hard have parry haste turned off (such as Patchwerk).

I am a new player to the tank world. that being said, i formed my death knight as tank right from lvl 80. My gear consist of mainly naxx 10 man gear, and abit 25 man gear.

I am ofc dual wielding!!

Finding that the spec 10/35/26 is far the best for tanking.

I am MT in my guild, and tanked all bosses in 10 man content, and alot on 25 man. i got NO lcue to the mechanics that you ppl mention, but in real "life" i know that most of the guilds healers prefer me tanking over any of our other tanks. they are atm not as good geared as me, but close by. so if indeed this parry-gib was a problem on booses i am sure that someone would have mentioned it. i am yet to be dropped by a healer in any raid. unless ofc, there is failure somewhere else.

However my biggest problem is threat. no matter what spec i use, i cant seem to get it past 5k at the most, and most of the time im pullng 3-4 k in raids. whisch is sadly far behind any paladin or druid on single target`s.

from what i can see on Recount i just simply miss too much. and its just not possible atm to get more hit rating without having a nerf on my defense or expertize.

I am using red sword as my main weapon, knowing that a few blues tank swords have slower atack speed. and i can boost my threat just abit.

However i never loose my target on bosss to dps. Yet. knowing that DK`s get their dmg thru their dmg. this will eventually become a problem, as we already got mages pulling up to 4k tps at times.

My only solution to Dw tanking without enterferring with the normal way of dps in pvp etc, is to make some certain spell do 150% agro. lke for instance Frost strike.

this would surely make frost strike to be chosen over deathcoil for dual wield tanks.

Atm i cant say that i see any trouble with the incomming dmg in DW spec. i got around 60-70 % aviodance, without my runeforging, as its used on cinderglacier, and razorize to maximise single target dps.

All i need is higher threat to keep up main tanking. which the slow 2hander form 4horsemen will help me with

Tbh blizzard should have made an epic 1hander with slow attack speed aviable way before naxx 25 man.

Anyways i pulled overall 1,9k dps in our latest naxx raid, and never lost agro to our dps. i dont get what ppl are on about. the instances theeese days are too easy anyways to be conserned by any inc dmg. even patchwerk. if healers drop you as Dw tanker, dont change ur spec. change your healers!

One major factor that you forgot. When 3.0.8 came out they changed Killing Machine to proc from auto attacks. Also they state that the slower your weapon the higher the chance. So with that being said. You take 2x [Broken Promise] since they have the slowest and highest top end output. And your looking at alot more procs along with higher rune/frost strike hits. Also while DW tanking you also increased your proc chance since you will have more auto swings vs a 2h weapon.

DW tanking can and is doable. Your just going to have a really hard time with fights that have you on the move alot. See the biggest thing right now with DW tanking vs 2h tanking is the burst threat. since DW you don't have the big 8-10k threat hits with say....blood strike. but if it comes down to it where its a tank&spank fight. giving the right gear. A good DW tank can out threat a holy pally on a fight like Patchwrek...I should know. I almost pulled off him and i have crap weapons.

Okey about dual wielding not be viable is bullshit. Im atm dual wielding with broken promise+last laugh combo. Tps with 12/51/8 is around 5-6.5k depending on fight. Avoidance like 68% (around 75% average with cd rotation). Parry gibb? Thats bullshit. Theres nice theography post on some forums about how dual wield tanking gives way less parrys on boss than example warrior. Last week patchwerk I took about 10 times less dmg than other tanks in patchwerk (he made 95k dmg on me, means it was 5hits trough). Most of attacks are unparryable. With right spec you use blood strike only every second rune rotation and refresh blood plague only when its neseccary. Main hand attacks should be always rune strike (get broken promise or some blue slow 1h). Frost strike is unparryable aswell. That leaves only offhand hit parryable+4insta attacks/20secs. What I have seen and tested dual wield is far superior for 2h in all aspects when you get geared up littlebit. But for start I would go big 2h before you can get some expertise gear in ur hands.

HI, my Death Night is my guilds MT, and i tried DW and did not like it, then i got Titansteel Destroyer and put the rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle on it (which only works for 2h weapons) it gives you 25 defense rating and total stamina by 2%. And if you look at the DK moves they are a percentange of your weapons damage, so having a slower harder hitting weapon deals more damage and also causes more threat. At the moment i am in full 10 man raid gear and i can keep argo with warriors and other melee classes in 25 man raid armor. My spec is 7/51/13. I will never duel wield again because you have to worry about having hit rating on your armor and not Def or dodge, parry.

Excellent point that the haste increase is 24%, not 30%. More importantly, it's only an average 24% increase if the boss parries. Which means the boss doesn't get an automatic 24% haste increase just because you're dual wielding. It means if his parry rating is P, then he gets an average .24P haste rating increase.

In the worst case scenario, if you have 0 expertise and the boss has a 15% parry chance, then you're giving him an average 3.6% haste increase. Most bosses only have a 5% parry chance, which would be an average 1.2% haste increase if you have 0 expertise. A relatively easy to achieve 164 expertise would reduce that to 0. And reduce the most difficult bosses to 2.4% haste increase.

Considering your dps gain, that's a trade off. You take an average 2.4% more damage, you increase your auto attack dps output considerably more than that. Easily worthwhile if that 2.4% gain were spread out evenly, debatable because it's more accurate to say you're creating a 2.4% chance that you take a lot of damage very quickly. The rule of thumb is to stack on as much expertise as possible without gimping other stats.

But honestly, Frost Knight tanking, you're not dual wielding for the dps boost. Even the benefit of more tanking stats or using two runed weapons is secondary. Dual wielding, with the amount of hit you want to feel comfortable that your Howling Blasts don't miss, will nearly double the number of Killing Machine procs. And Killing Machine enhanced Howling Blasts are the primary threat generation engine for Frost Knight tanks.

Maybe it's a good idea to carry a two handed weapon around and equip it on certain bosses, as determined by their parry rating and need for AoE tanking. For the vast majority of fights, though, dual wielding is awesome.

Jack - Most bosses only have a 5% parry chance, which would be an average 1.2% haste increase if you have 0 expertise.

Sorry, but I wanted to correct this. This is not remotely true. The average parry value for raid bosses is 14%. This is pretty easy to test yourself - go tank a boss in Naxx and check afterwards how many times you were parried. Or tank the heroic training dummy.

The nice advantage of DK tanking is that it doesn't have a ton of parryable special attacks. Unlike a warrior (most) or a druid (basically all), only a few can be parried. It's similar to a paladin in that respect. The disadvantage is that expertise is pretty poor compared to hit as a threat stat (though not as bad as paladins have it) which means that you likely won't be getting a ton of expertise on the gear you actually want.

It'll be curious to see how this all plays out in Ulduar. T7 didn't have anything that parry-hasted worth a damn; the best thing that came remotely close was Sarth3D, and by the time he starts hitting fast and hard enough to really threaten you've got enough healers on you and enough health that he's trivial. But Ulduar has some very, very hard hitting mobs. I think there will be quite a few warriors and druids going in there who haven't been looking at expertise as much, and will be getting parrygibbed left and right. We'll see.

I Have been reading this post and I have to admit, I honestly wanna smack anyone who thinks DW > 2H.

First off, the hit cap for DW is about 27%(?), thats 700 hit rating just so you don't miss vs. the 260 needed for a 2H.

second, most DK dmg dealing abilities are based on Main Hand Weapon Dmg. 2Hs have way more dmg, thats how they are, nothing but common sense there. DMG = Threat.

3rd, Since the introduction of the Rune of the Stone skin Gargoyle. it should be pretty clear, DKs DON'T need Def on weapons. if you read the tooltip it says 25 Defense, NOT defense rating. thats a free 25 Defense. this is more than any DW coupling can come up with. 2Hs also come with more stam. More health is necessary and part of our survival since we don't equip shields. more or less like a druid does except we have parry included.

Just being rational and using common sense will tell anyone that is confused about this to use a 2H. if you dont agree, i suggest you re-roll or quit tanking

I so have to agree with the above post, seriousely why introduce something which is going to increase the amount of boss parries by being there alone, increase the amount of boss paries with its speed,(this factor doubled also because the main hand will also be quicker than a 2 hander). Damage/threat is reduced because the main hand is quicker so damage/threat caused by magic and physical is less. There is absolutely no point in reinventing a wheel to be square.

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.